More and more art students (the Royal College of Art, the Hague, the Royal College of Art, London and PXL Mad, Hasselt) are taught how to engage with new and demanding (museum) audiences through the sense of smell.

The Dutch-Japanese artist Maki Ueda has been teaching the course ”Smell and Art” at the ArtSicence Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of Arts the Hague for almost 10 years now. Ueda choose the olfactory game as a starting point because it requires a creative approach, that is neutral in a sense that the quality and nature of the scents are less important than the sense of smell itself:

“From the beginning I made a conceptual and abstract approach to medium of smell […] We always have limited fragrance materials but we never end up with thinking of new games”

Beside challenging her students to playfully explore the limits of our most neglected sense in order to get acquainted with its characteristics and peculiarities, there is also a practical dimension. Students actually learn the basic skills of perfume making:

“There needs to be a poetic aesthetic dimension too. That is why I teach students a somewhat scientific approach to the medium of smell by extracting and composing, in order to entertain their audience in a creative way”

Subscribe To

Links

About This Blog

Smell and Art is a course given by Maki Ueda at ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, The Netherlands

course conception: Maki Ueda

Maki Ueda started her olfactory art course Smell and Art in 2009 at the ArtScience Interfaculty. In the course students learn a conceptual and abstract approach to the medium of smell. The use of smell goes beyond the representational use and focuses on its qualities and experience without a need for a narrative or context. The students are challenged to develop olfactory games using this approach. Furthermore, they learn chemical skills by extracting and composing smells to support their creations. The game format challenges our imagination: while we always have limited fragrance materials, we never stop thinking of new games. The Japanese traditional olfactory game Kodo is a good example of this.

Maki Ueda is an olfactory artist who explores olfaction with an abstract and conceptual approach. She was the World Technology Awards finalist in 2009 (category: art), and the Art and Olfaction Awards finalist in 2016 (Sadakichi Award). She is a guest teacher at ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, The Netherlands. Maki Ueda is currently based in Okinawa, Japan. www.ueda.nl